As the 2014 election cycle begins to take shape, the candidates jockeying for position in the crowded GOP Senate primary are all trying to break away from the pack as the best option to take on Democrat Bruce Braley in the fall.

Five days before he was to start college, Fred Maahs’ world turned
upside down. Off the Delaware coast in 1980, on the last day of summer
vacation, the 18-year-old took a dive from his family’s boat into an
unseen sandbar barely a foot below the surface, sustaining injuries that
paralyzed him from the chest down.

When the call came from an officer who needed help facing an armed
robber at a fast-food restaurant, two members of a reality television
show riding along with Omaha police hustled to record the confrontation.

As the nation's midsection has grown more conservative and Republican, Democrats have sometimes had to rest their hopes on well-positioned GOP contenders imploding with their own politically off-key statements.

Responding to a major case of research misconduct, federal prosecutors have taken the rare step of filing charges against a scientist after he admitted falsifying data that led to millions in grants and hopes of a breakthrough in AIDS vaccine research.

A popular Iowa State University celebration was suspended Wednesday after a student was seriously injured in a rowdy, late-night crowd that overturned cars and toppled light poles near the campus, the school's president announced Wednesday.

Legislation to boost Iowa's minimum wage earned preliminary approval Tuesday in the Democratic-majority state Senate, though supporters acknowledge the bill faces major hurdles due to a lack of Republican support.